After church, Palin’s family posed for this picture, on the Alaskan coastline. Palin would later identify Libya in the background.

After two months of arduous campaigning–the My-Fair-Lady-coaching, the six-figure wardrobing, the Katie-Couric-catfight-to-end-all-catfights, etc.–Sarah Palin finally joined John McCain in conceding their party’s nomination to President Elect Barack Obama.

Returning to her office in Anchorage with several McC-aides, the state governor stood in front of a bay window that offered a breathtaking view of the shores of Tripoli, then sighed. “Y’know, I think this may be a historic moment for the North African Free Trade Agreement.” (An aide tried to correct her, but she roguely slapped him across the face). “Their country has never appointed a President, so we should welcome Obama to this continent with open arms.”

Palin’s comments puzzled reporters, who sought to broach the topic of foreign relations with her. She stood on the other side of her governor’s desk, flipping through a magazine. There were eight children in the room, some crawling, others drooling. One was named after a snowmobile company.

A reporter politely asked her what she was reading, and, unable to muster a reply, she started to cry. “If Todd were here” (her husband was out seal-clubbing) “he would tell you what a strain this has been on our family…not to mention our nation. Between Russia rearing its head in our airspace and Africa popping up on our border, foreign relations have become impossible around here.” Noticing the stunned look on reporters’ faces, Gov. Palin pulled down a screen-map of the Bering Strait. “Now do you see? Africa has moved into our sea space!” she cried, her voice reaching a frantic pitch. She began to babble, then speak in tongues.

Fearing the demise of her own species, Sarah Palin (seen here on a baby-seal-clubbing expedition) opposes evolutionism.

She has swept simian beauty pageants. Hitchhiked without using a (pre-hensile) thumb. Coupled with her life-long (running) mate in the Alaska wildlife refuge. And her banana peeling skills are said to be legendary.

She is Sarah Palin, the presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate for the 2008 Election.

She is a beauty contest winner, an expert sharpshooter, an obedient wife, and a proud mother. Every Sunday at her Pentecostal church, she can be found thumping her chest and swinging from the rafters, railing against the evils of evolution…for obvious reasons. Many members of her Alaskan cabinet of Intelligent Design have supported her views, though they lack the ability to hear, see, or speak about the complexities of the real world outside of their insulated habitat:

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil…

However, one survivor has seen, first-hand, the negative, global impact of this governor’s environmental policies…

Over the past decade, the American public has slowly but surely unraveled the cryptic, elusive “mystery-wrapped-inside-of-an-enigma” that is Ben Affleck.

We have known him in Boston as Chuckie Sullivan, the brash, ball-busting sidekick in “Good Will Hunting.” We have known him in Hawaii as Captain Rafe McCawley in “Pearl Harbor,” in Las Vegas as Jack Dupree in “Smokin’ Aces,” and even in Texas as that paddle-wielding taunt who got paint-splattered in “Dazed and Confused.” But it’s only recently that Ben Affleck has peeled away yet another layer–this time, to raise public awareness about himself in the Congo.

On Thursday night, ABC’s Nightline aired an exclusive documentary on Mr. Affleck in the Congo, a region which, having suffered the loss of four million people in ten years, can at last find solace in the story of one celebrity’s redemption. The film, based on a journey that Ben’s brother Casey took to Darfur two years ago, features sweeping vistas, live gazelles, and a breath-taking soundtrack with instruments that sound African. Affleck admits that opening up to his fans under such dire circumstances was, at first, very difficult:

“You have to put yourself out there,” he said, “and reveal personal things about yourself to millions of adoring fans who have never even seen me in a movie that has the Congo in it. Sure, they’re on close terms with the Larry Gigli me who kidnaps a retarded man and falls in love with a lesbian assassin, but will they recognize the international rescue worker me who runs a refugee camp for abandoned orphans?”

Ben Affleck’s Inner Gigli

Affleck admits that preparing for the part was the most daunting challenge he has ever faced. “There were days I’d wake up, usually around noon, read over my lines for the day and think, ‘how do I make make that speech stand out with the sounds of gunfire and screaming childless mothers in the background?’ Do I read it right into the camera?–or off to one side like I did in Pearl Harbor :

‘Danny, you can’t die. You can’t die. You know why? ‘Cause you’re gonna be a father. You’re gonna be a daddy. I wasn’t supposed to tell you. You’re gonna be a father.’

Or do I play it like Danny? Or Daddy? I’m not sure. It’s all so nerve-wracking.”

AMSTERDAM: After nearly four centuries of proud vowelessness, the executives of Grolsch have finally reached a consensus and decided to have a long-overdue vowel movement into the title of their beer. The company was originally opened in 1615 on the IJJklmnhm River by a pair of burghers, Jhn and Frnk, whom local villagers considered mad (their first abortive effort, a solar mill, closed after one week).

The Grolsch Family Solar Mill was soon converted…after the discovery of wind

Within a few years, however, patrons could be found lining up outside their small distillery, quaffing pints of the consonant-rich brew…the rest, as they say, is history.

The Grolsch Family’s failure to communicate was legendary. Simple tasks, as depicted in this painting “The Cupboard Watch,” could become daunting, all-day events.

Jhn Jcb Grolsch, the last living descendant of the family, reluctantly agreed on Monday to accept the overwhelming pressure of his fellow stockholders: “It pains me greatly,” he said, “and it pains my family greatly, too, since none of us, for three hundred years, has have ever had a vowel movement. Imagine my relief, when I finally heard the word ‘Groolsch.’ A great weight had been released from me and washed gently down the drain.”

Scientists have now confirmed that Erectile Dysfunction (E.D.) is linked, perversely proportionally, to symptoms of sexual frustration.

The test subjects, only one of whom could be reached for comment, allegedly admitted that E.D. “had let me down at a crucial moment. Sh*t--After the flesh I lost, they should call that f***er E.D. Amin.”

The scientists, who have successfully linked ED to all kinds of diseases and disorders (including lymphoma and pole-straddling), had not yet considered a relation to either frustration experienced during sexual activity or to the deceased cannibalistic Ugandan dictator.

Bush has been backing his State Secretary “like white (house) on Rice.”

In response to recent demands for diplomacy from U.S. markets, the Bush administration announced Friday that it would begin rationing Condoleeza Rice to customers in order to ease the economic strain of recent weeks. Reporters for Doubletake encountered the Secretary of State in a San Bernardino Costco, where she alloted herself to ten customers for thirty seconds apiece—before being whisked away by Blackwater security guards to a Super Walmart in Boise.

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